Silly Season 2022

[mknight]

The missing thing is interaction between driver and engineers.
With simple cars it might be the drivers that tell engineers exactly what to change or even do it themselves.

In WRC today it likely is much more about telling the engineer what that car does and should do and it's engineers job to translate it to diff maps or suspension settings.


And then there is the decisions and priority aspect. If leadership says the engineer decides and driver just drives it's hard to change much (Meeke in C3, Nandan's phylosophy). Or if they use 50 different dampers and do every test run with a different pair (Hyundai 2018).
For priority it's a problem if one driver wants to make changes that need a joker and don't suit the other driver. (Lappi seemed to have this issues both at Toyota and Citroen, Paddon at Hyundai etc.)

[Danny0405]

There is no correlation between driver's speed and their ability to develop a car. Some of the best test drivers never achieved anything on world level (Philippe Bugalski, Mark Higgins, Bryan Bouffier, Roman Kresta) while some top WRC drivers haven't understood their cars at all.

Agree (we can also evoked Matthew Wilson) but in the case of M-Sport for its Rally2 car, they need to dramatically improve the car but also to have a consistent driver to deliver results against good drivers such as Ostberg, Suninen, ...

So I think that with his experience even in RC2, it would be a very good pick to hire Mikkelsen with an offer 4/5 Rally1 rallyes (even if it means Greensmith and Fourmaux does 11 rallyes out of 13 each) + a 7-round program in Rally2.
And for Mikkelsen, it is not a bad offer as a third year without any Rally1 drives would almost have meant the end of his hopes of returning in the main category.
It costs a little money maybe but I don’t really howM-Sport can come back in the game in Rally2 without a move like this (or an equivalent driver but they cannot attract Suninen so it lets only Ostberg which is that simple) and this category is important for them.

[mknight]

I am getting the impression that MSport is now sacrificing "everything" for Rally1. I'd guess with the aim of both "pleasing" Ford and selling the Rally1 cars (or drives in them).

In many ways the situation is very similar to 2005-2006. In 2005 they used Gardemeister and Kresta (who was paying) + some other pay starts (Sola).
Then in 2006 they hired Gronholm who was 2x World Champion and Hirvonen who had some very good results/speed the year before. Most notably they also basically completely ignored Fiesta S1600 development at that time.

So now it is entirely possible they ignore Rally2 development for a while and try to get more income from Rally1 where they have less competition.
(depends on how Hyundai acts though, lately they started offering paydrives to the likes of Loubet, Veiby and now Solans, basically stealing MSport businness case)

For me the biggest differences is in the lineup: Gronholm+Hirvonen vs Breen+ Fourmaux and Greensmith (likely).
- Breen has more merits and experience than Hirvonen had in 2005 but nowehere near Gronholm.
- Fourmaux is about comparable with Hirvonen at end of 2003 (two years less experience).
Both are one step down basically.

- Greemsmith now is a perfect copy of Matthew Wilson at that time, in more ways that one.

[Mirek]

The missing thing is interaction between driver and engineers.
With simple cars it might be the drivers that tell engineers exactly what to change or even do it themselves.

In WRC today it likely is much more about telling the engineer what that car does and should do and it's engineers job to translate it to diff maps or suspension settings.

Sorry but that is a misconception. The cars of today are NOT more complicated than those of the past. Today all cars are generally same and relatively simple (even 2017-2021 WRC ones). The WRC of 2000' were definitely more complicated than those of today. Add to that stuff like twenty different tyre compounds for every rally and you'll end up with a head-exploding stuff. The cars of gr.B were complicated in a different way - each one was very different to another and there was little universal knowledge applicable on all. Today all cars are generally same and bound by very strict rules, nobody can bring something completely ground breaking which requires discovering completely different settings. In the gr.B era that was the case of nearly every car.

[mknight]

Was thinking about the Group A era (1987-1998/9) since people like Pentti got mentioned.
The 2000-2005 WRC were quite complicated with 3 active diffs and various styles of semi-active suspension tricks (nice summary on WRCWINGS lately).

[Mirek]

Was thinking about the Group A era (1987-1998/9) since people like Pentti got mentioned.
The 2000-2005 WRC were quite complicated with 3 active diffs and various styles of semi-active suspension tricks (nice summary on WRCWINGS lately).

Gr.A era brough plenty of new features which weren't used before in rallying while the currently ending era brought basically nothing never used before. Rear-axle handbrake release, hydraulic differentials, sequential gearboxes, anti-lag systems, non-linear springs, helper springs, air-pressure reservoirs, air-cooled brakes, turbo restrictors were all big news of the gr.A era (to name some).

[Danny0405]

I am getting the impression that MSport is now sacrificing "everything" for Rally1. I'd guess with the aim of both "pleasing" Ford and selling the Rally1 cars (or drives in them).

Would sound really strange to me because, except maybe the McRae-Sainz era, even in its best period of involvement, Ford didn’t put as much money as other manufacturers.
In addition to that, even if they have succeeded in containing the increase in cost with the new generation, the 2022 car will still cost a lot more than the prior-2016 car so there will not be really much customers than in the 2017-2021 period for them (maybe they can have one or two customers per rallye maximum which would already be an improvement but not sufficient to cover all costs of the team).

+ if they wanted to put all in Rally1, I understand they couldn’t attract a big driver in their situation but, at least, they should have retain a second good driver such as Lappi.

[MentalParadox]

Throwing a pinch of salt here... If the rumor of Adamo being on the hot seat are true, anyone thinking that maybe Solberg Sr. is waiting in the wings ? He had been pretty vocal in the past about his willingness to run a factory WRC team, has a very positive image in Asia from his Subaru days ... and this may explain the signing of Oliver which every pundit agrees is too early if not in a 4th, zero-responsability, car ... Just speculating of course.

I think any talk of Adamo being given the boot is just ridiculous. In three years, he delivered Hyundai two manufacturer titles, while Nandan before him managed exactly zero in 4 years. Getting rid of Andrea would be a horrible move, imo... I think some people here just don't like him because he has a strong personality and tends to speaks his mind, a trait often despised in this corporate era where everyone has their personality media trained out of them.

[mknight]

Before I heard the rumor 1,5 months ago I never even thought about it. Nobody really had any rumors about Penasse before he got kicked either.

Anyway the results this year are a disaster in multiple ways as was listed before, no reason to repeat it.

Another thing is his personality.
2 years ago I though he was ruthless, but clever. Since then my opinion of him changed to a "panic manager" that changes his "beliefs" on the spot. One rally he talks about some principles that he always has, 4 rallies later he does the opposite and says that was always his opinion.
Lately "kicking" Solberg upwards after every crash on a whim is starting to border craziness.

Note how the Hyundai results seem to go down while the number of his strange decisions increases.

[djip]

I think any talk of Adamo being given the boot is just ridiculous. In three years, he delivered Hyundai two manufacturer titles, while Nandan before him managed exactly zero in 4 years. Getting rid of Andrea would be a horrible move, imo... I think some people here just don't like him because he has a strong personality and tends to speaks his mind, a trait often despised in this corporate era where everyone has their personality media trained out of them.

Don't put me wrong : I love the man, the character. but as mknight said, his latest decisions are strange at best. If you shoot for a championship, your 3rd car must be a "fast but safe driver", Sordo-like. There are aplenty out there, ostberg probably the best example . If you want to gamble a bit, why not trying Paddon. And then if you look into the future, you can play the long game with a fast-but-crash-prone youngster such as Solberg, but that's about it (BTW, looking at how the seaons unfolded, fame and glorious name apart, would'nt you place your bets for the promising youngster on yohann rossel ? He has been real dominant in WRC3 and lately was even chasiing the top WR2 guys ....